About The Team

Monday, August 16, 2010

What You Have to Know About CPSC

by Lyudmila Klebansky (WoolSolution)

I promised few days ago to collect, sort and post info about CPSC.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has jurisdiction over many types of consumer products, from coffee makers, to toys, to lawn mowers, to fireworks.After all reading I cannot tell you that I completely understand the CPSIA when the CPSC itself has been giving conflicting information about what is required. Like 99.9% of the legislation that is passed by Congress, the CSPIA is written in convoluted legalese and most of the representatives I guess didn’t read it.

Two years ago, President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act into law, giving vast new powers to CPSC and promising wondrous new levels of "safety" for children in our country. The CPSC regulations required every manufacturer, importer or private labeler of a children's product to have their product tested for phthalate and lead by an accredited independent testing lab and certified. Etsy had been warning for months that many of its artists and craftspeople members might not be able stay in business "due to the burdensome cost of testing and certification pursuant to the proposed legislation."

Well, we all want to make safe and good quality handmade goods and without going nuts about all the rules I’ll give you a quick overview and few links to help you find info related to your product.

Make sure you use safe items, such as fabrics, yarns, polyfil, paints, glues sold in the U.S. You can always check the list of Regulated Products http://www.cpsc.gov/businfo/reg.html. Put as much information as possible on the labels and warning tags. Put all what you know about materials in the items description.

Useful post, Luda. I remember when there was a flurry at etsy a couple of years ago about this - and it did seem like people were going to have to jump through incredible hoops, especially anyone producing things for children. You've given a good list of links - thank you.